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Paper Bag Gingerbread House and a Free Candy Sheet Printable

Phew!! School's out and today is the first day of Christmas holidays!

I'm most thrilled to have two weeks to wake up WITHOUT an alarm clock! Ahhhh.......Although school is on hiatus, we did so many fun activities this past month, I thought I'd squeeze in one more post before Christmas hits!One of my favourite days this month was our unofficial "gingerbread man" day.The day began by making a gingerbread craft.This year we made gingerbread houses using paper bags.

The children coloured paper candies and a door and then glued those onto a lunch bag laid flat on the table. We had some fruit loops leftover from another craft, so we set those out for the children to glue onto the bag, as well.

Once the bags were fully decorated, we stuffed in some crumpled paper and stapled a roof to the top.Here's another finished sample created by one of our 3 year olds. (Just pretend the dripping glue is icing!)

We continued the gingerbread theme at circle time. Each of the children were given some playdoughthat was disguised to look like real dough by making it brown and adding spices.(You know - teacher trickery!)Each child used his piece to collectively create a giant gingerbread man on our cookie sheet.When the g-man was fully shaped, we popped him into the oven "to bake." My daughters were volunteering that day and while our cookie was baking, they performed the gingerbread man story with puppets at our makeshift theater.

Usually we cover this theatre/storage shelf with a tablecloth to add some flair, but this day we didn't get to it. Not that the children cared. They just love the variety of having a puppet show at circle time!While the kids were watching the puppet show, lo and behold, the gingerbread man magically "disappeared" from the oven. The class searched for the escaped cookie by following a series of clues that had been planted throughout our centre.

The gingerbread man was never found, but when we returned to class, he had left a cookie for each of the kids to decorate with icing and candies.

Not a bad consolation! If you'd like a copy of a candy sheet to use for your own gingerbread house, click here to get a free download!

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